Why renewals are the most winnable business you have
Every renewal in your book starts from a position no new lead can match. The client already knows you. They have already trusted you once with the largest transaction of their life, and the outcome of that transaction is sitting in their home. You do not have to earn attention from a stranger or explain what a broker does.
The file already exists too. You know the property, the original approval, the income picture at the time, the lender, the term, and the rate. Almost everything a new application would require from scratch is already recorded. The work left is confirming what has changed and finding the better outcome.
That combination, an existing relationship plus an existing file, makes renewals the highest return use of an hour in most practices. The catch is that the advantage only holds while the client is still deciding. Once they sign something, the conversation is over for another term.
Why timing decides the outcome
Lenders send renewal offers well ahead of maturity. That letter or email arrives in the client's mailbox with a rate, a signature line, and the reassuring simplicity of doing nothing difficult. A client who has not heard from anyone else has no reason to question it. Signing the first offer they receive feels responsible, not lazy.
This is the whole problem in one sentence. You are not competing on rate against the lender. You are competing against convenience, and convenience arrives first unless you do. If your first contact happens after the offer letter, you are asking the client to reopen a decision they already made. If your first contact happens before it, you are the one framing what a good renewal looks like.
So the goal of early outreach is not to close anything. It is to make sure that when the lender's envelope shows up, your client already has a second opinion waiting and knows to check with you first.
A workable outreach timeline
Treat the schedule below as a default to adapt, not a rule. Some clients want more contact and some want none until the last month. Term length, lender behaviour, and how engaged the client has been all shift the right cadence. What matters is that the first touch lands before the lender's offer, and that each touch after it carries something useful.
Roughly six months out: the check in
This one is not about the mortgage at all. It is a light, human touch that reestablishes contact before there is anything to sell. Ask how the house is treating them, whether anything has changed at work or at home, and whether they are thinking about any projects in the next year. Mention, once and briefly, that their term matures in about six months and that you will be watching the market for them. Then stop talking about it.
Roughly four months out: the rate check
Now bring something concrete. Tell them where rates sit relative to the rate they are paying, and what that difference would mean on their actual balance. A short note that says what their payment could look like is far more useful than an offer to talk. Invite a reply rather than a meeting. This is also the moment to warn them, gently, that their lender will send an offer soon and that it is worth a two minute check before signing anything.
Roughly three months out: the options conversation
By now the lender's offer may already have arrived. Ask them to forward it. This is the real conversation: what the lender is offering, what else is available, whether a straight renewal or a refinance serves them better, and what they want the next few years to look like. If they are planning a move, a renovation, a business, or a growing family, the term structure matters as much as the rate.
The final month: decide and execute
In the last stretch, the message becomes specific and time bound. Confirm the recommendation, confirm the paperwork you need, and give a clear date by which things must be signed so the new mortgage funds cleanly at maturity. If they are staying with the current lender, say so plainly. Advising a client to accept a good offer builds more trust than moving them for the sake of a deal.
Make the early touches useful, not salesy
The fastest way to lose a renewal is to sound like a renewal campaign. Three kinds of contact tend to land well. A rate check, which is factual and takes no effort to read. A payment comparison, which turns an abstract rate into a number they recognise from their bank account. And a question about their plans, which is genuinely about them and often surfaces the refinance, the second property, or the debt consolidation you would never have known about.
Keep the early messages short. One idea, one number, one question. Long messages read as marketing and get archived. A two line note with a real figure in it gets a reply.
What to prepare before the call
Walking into a renewal conversation without the numbers wastes the advantage the relationship gives you. Before you call, have four things in front of you.
Their current rate and term structure, so you can speak to the actual gap rather than a general market comment. Their remaining balance and amortization, since the balance is what makes a rate difference meaningful or trivial. Penalty considerations if there is any question of breaking early, because a client who hears about a penalty from their lender after the fact will remember who did not mention it. And a view on whether a refinance beats a straight renewal, which depends on their equity, their other debt, and what they are planning.
You should also know what has changed since funding. Income, employment, credit, household size, and any new debt all affect which lenders will look at the file. A renewal that looked automatic can become a placement problem if something material has shifted, and it is better to find that out four months early than four weeks late.
A note on consent and compliance
Outreach to existing clients still sits inside CASL expectations. Existing business relationships create room for commercial messages, but that room is not unlimited and it does not last forever. Identify yourself clearly, include a working unsubscribe path in commercial electronic messages, and honour requests to stop promptly and across every channel you use. This is general information rather than legal advice, and a brokerage should confirm its own practices with counsel.
Automating the timeline
The reason renewals get missed is almost never that the broker does not care. It is that maturity dates live in a spreadsheet, or in memory, and the six month mark passes during a busy purchase season. The fix is to let the file remember for you.
BrokerDam tracks maturity dates on funded files and raises the outreach touches on schedule, so the six month check in and the four month rate check appear as tasks rather than as things you were supposed to remember. You can read more about renewal automation here, and about spotting the files where a refinance beats a straight renewal on the refinance opportunities page.